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et al.
2012b), eventually leading to giving up online shopping. Thus, their perceived TCs,
reflected in uncertainties and risks of online shopping, would play a dominate role in
determining their online decision making (e.g., online purchase behaviour and loyalty). In
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this sense, their low risk-bearing attitudes magnify the effects of TCs on online purchase
behaviour (or loyalty).
The quality of certain products, such as shirts and perfumes, is hard to confirm prior to the
online purchase. It would take a lot of time and effort to find out whether the quality is good
or bad, which would result in a high level of TCs of online shopping (Teo
et al.
2004, Yen
et
al.
2013). Nevertheless, if a consumer is a risk-taker, he would be more likely to tolerate risks
in online environments and tend to trust the quality of the product offered by the online
vendor and buy the product without any extra quality inspection. In this situation, the high
risk-bearing attitude would tend to make him purchase from an online store and develop loyal
relationship with the online vendor even if his perceived TCs are high. The consumer’s risk-
bearing propensity plays an important role and seems to matter more to this individual, while
the TCs seems to take a back-seat. Thus, the high risk-bearing attitudes lessen the effects of
TCs on online purchase behaviour and customer loyalty.
The above discussion shows that it would be difficult to predict upfront consumers’ online
purchase behaviour and their loyalty without taking their risk-bearing propensity into
consideration. This study further argues that if a consumer is a risk-averse person, the effects
of perceived TCs on purchase behaviour and customer loyalty will be stronger, while if a
consumer is risk-taker, the effects of perceived TCs on purchase behaviour and loyalty will
be weaker. As such, consumers’ risk-bearing propensity is expected to play a moderating role
in the relationship between TCs and purchase behaviour (or customer loyalty). Accordingly,
the following hypotheses are proposed:
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H7a. A customer’s risk-bearing propensity moderates the relationship between his/her
perception of TCs associated with purchasing from an online store and his/her online
purchase behaviour from the online store.
H7b. A customer’s risk-bearing propensity moderates the relationship between his/her
perception of TCs associated with purchasing from an online store and his/her loyalty
towards the online store.
3.6.4.2 Perceived Enjoyment of Online Shopping
This study defines enjoyment of online shopping as the extent to which the activity of
adopting online shopping is perceived to be enjoyable in its own right, apart from any
performance consequences that may be anticipated (Moon and Kim 2001, Heijden 2003,
Domina
et al.
2012). It can be two-fold: enjoyment from the product purchased as well as the
process of shopping itself (Baker and Wakefield 2012). Evidence from previous studies has
shown that enjoyment of shopping is regarded as an important determinant of why consumers
shop (Mathwick and Rigdon 2004, Doolin
et al.
2005, Cai and Xu 2007, Chiu
et al.
2009a,
Ha and Stoel 2009, Parboteeah
et al.
2009, Al-Maghrabi and Dennis 2011, Kim and Eastin
2011).
When consumers value fun, exciting, enjoyable and interesting experience of shopping, they
reduce the concern about the time and effort expended during the shopping process
(Leischnig
et al.
2011), instead, they pay more attention to the degree of enjoyment obtained
through browsing and purchasing at the online shopping websites. Hence, TCs seem not so
important in this particular situation where perceived enjoyment matters more to their
decision making than their perceptions of TCs. In the online shopping context, if consumers
treat online shopping as an enjoyable or fun activity and emphasize the fun or entertainment
156
brought by the online vendors or their products, they would be more likely to purchase at the
online stores no matter how many TCs they may encounter. In this case, they would not
worry too much about the risks of online shopping and would not spend much time and effort
evaluating the products and monitoring online vendors’ behaviour. Therefore, the effects of
TCs on online purchase behaviour are reduced when consumers perceive a high level of
enjoyment.
However, there exists another completely opposite situation. Assume a consumer needs to
buy an airline ticket for a meeting held in another city after returning home from a stressful
work-day. Buying tickets becomes a task so he just wants to complete it as soon as possible.
If he chooses to buy the ticket online, he would be more concerned about the time and effort
expended during the purchasing process and would not care much about whether buying
online is fun or not. In this case where purchasing becomes a task, task-oriented consumers
would not have a particular pursuit of enjoyment. Without a strong sense of enjoyment, time
and effort saving will emerge as their biggest concern. Thus, the TCs (represented by time
and effort expended) consumers bear during the shopping process matters more than the
perception of enjoyment. In other words, consumers’ perceived TCs are of paramount
importance in determining their behaviour in the situation where they do not care about or
experience the pleasure and joy from shopping at an online store. In this sense, the low
enjoyment perceived by consumers would strengthen the effects of TCs on their online
behavioural consequences. As such it is hypothesized that:
H8a. A customer’s perceived enjoyment of online shopping moderates the relationship
between his/her perception of TCs associated with purchasing from an online store and
his/her online purchase behaviour from the online store.
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H8b. A customer’s perceived enjoyment of online shopping moderates the relationship
between his/her perception of TCs associated with purchasing from an online store and
his/her loyalty towards the online store.
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